All in Age: 7.5
I crawl back to give Master Mind room to land.
In a few seconds, I see the bottom of his leg beyond the top of the tunnel, slowly descending. Sitting on it is Joy.
“Joy!” She’s alive! Thank goodness, she’s alive!
She leaps off Master Mind’s foot and looks at me. “Grampa! You’ve been shot! Are you okay?”
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After a couple of minutes just resting, lying on my side on the ground of the tunnel, I decide that I’m not going to die. It doesn’t look like I’m going to lose consciousness if I keep resting.
That’s good. I haven’t lost that much blood.
I wonder if I should take off my jetpack, which is making it hard to lie down.
No. I should wear it. Just in case.
I decide I’m good enough to crawl to the tunnel entrance and peek down.
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I’ve been shot. I’m in pain. I’m bleeding. I’m woozy from the loss of blood. And Charlie’s tourniquet disappeared with him.
I’m just a dream, I keep thinking. It’s okay if I die!
But it’s not. I don’t want to die here. I feel just like I did in the waking world. I am Walter Shelley! I don’t feel like a dream. I don’t feel like a made-up thing, like dragons, or space pirates. I feel like myself.
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I’m lying on the slimy tunnel ground of this strange dream, the jetpack still on my back. My shoulder is in unbelievable pain. I can see there’s blood coming out of it from the corner of my eye. And Joy’s been taken!
I’m just a dream, I tell myself. It’s okay if I die!
I look behind me. I see only Charlie and Master Mind. “Where are they?” I say.
“They were shot!” Charlie says. “They disappeared! You’re bleeding! I have to save Joy! You’re bleeding!”
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I find that I’m breathing hard. This was scary for me. I try to sort myself out. Everyone is.
We’re all here in this small tunnel, where Justin, Master Mind and I can’t even stand up straight. Madelyn keeps touching Joy’s shoulders to see that she is fine.
Charlie jumps up and down, and occasionally laughs to himself. I think he completely panicked.
Justin exhales. All he’s worried about is that Joy got out safely.
Joy recovers the fastest. She goes to the edge of the tunnel and looks down. “What was happening there? Why were there all those kids with--”
Then, out of nowhere, the adult dreamer appears from the outside, below the tunnel’s exit, his arms grab Joy inside the tunnel, and scoop her towards him.
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Justin raises his hands. “Hey there, hey there,” he says in a calm voice. “We come in peace.”
Three of the children are aiming their guns at us over their breakfast table, here in the desert. The other children look at us with fear in their eyes.
“Everybody, keep your guns down,” Justin instructs everyone in a calm tone. “Master Mind, step in front of her.”
The three kids all point their guns at Justin.
“You’re not going to shoot me, are you going to shoot me?” he says in a very calm voice, his arms still raised, as Master Mind places himself between Joy and the children. “Do you understand English? Parlez vous Francais? Dreamers, prepare something that will protect us from bullets,” he says that last sentence in the same tone as if speaking to the children.
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We take turns peeking out of the tunnel and looking down at this dream that Charlie had found.
When it’s my turn, I see that we are in the middle of the desert. The desert is rocky with sparse green bushes I’ve never seen before.
“I don’t recognize this place,” I tell them.
Fortunately, Madelyn is next. “This is Guban Desert,” she says. “I have been here once. We are in Somalia.”
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Charlie flies into the dream with a jetpack on his back and hovers next to Madelyn, looking at Joy and Justin.
“Guys, guys!” He's super excited. “I’ve found a dream! A dream with kids!”
“What!” Joy opens her mouth in surprise and seems unable to close it.
“There’s not just one kid - there are like ten kids. Boys and girls. They’re eating breakfast. It must be the Dreamer and his friends or her friends. And there are no demons anywhere! Just a camp!”.
Justin’s eyebrow furrows. “Are you sure, Charlie? No demons?”
“I’m sure. Double sure. Triple sure.”
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“Absolutely not!” Justin says adamantly to Joy’s fiftieth request.
We’ve been living on top of Justin’s Shroom and in the tunnels without going to any dream for three days now, which are three of Justin’s nights. Justin has not appeared once dreaming of those terrible demons, and so everyone including Justin agreed we could go back to Bonny’s Revenge.
But instead of returning, Joy wants to go look for all the missing Dreamer children. Charlie can’t be the only child around, and everyone we’ve met so far is around Justin’s age.
“There aren’t going to be any demons!” Joy insists. “You dreamed them up!”
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“Before we do anything, Joy has to brush her teeth,” Justin shows her the toothbrush and toothpaste that usually hang on the sabretooth’s teeth in her cabin. In his other hand he produces one of the many bottles of water made permanent on Bonny’s Revenge.
Joy, still groggy from sleep, makes a face, but takes the toothbrush.
“Zhoy sleeps in her, uh, clothes?” Madelyn says, forgetting for a moment a word in English then remembering it.
Joy looks around, confused, holding the toothbrush and the toothpaste in her hands.
“Joy, what’s the matter?” Charlie says.
“This is just… strange. How can I brush my teeth without a plank?”
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This is our first day staying in what Joy has named our ‘temporary base’: The tunnels into and out of Justin’s dream, and the Shroom outside.
We are still afraid that Justin will appear dreaming about those horrible demons. Which is also why we’re not going to Charlie’s dream. A dream’s a dream, regardless of the dreamer.
So here we are, those who stay behind when the Dreamers are awake: Master Mind, Suzy and I, and Joy.
Suzy is sitting on one of the two lawn chairs that Justin summoned, leaning outside the tunnel, and that Joy touched and made real. Suzy has put it on top of Justin’s Shroom, and is sitting on it like she’s on the beach. Except that she’s looking at countess Shrooms in every direction, stretching down past our ability to see, stretching up so high in the sky that we can’t discern their origin.
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The sky where the aerial battle had been between the condors and the demons is now different. One demon holds Justin’s limp body in the air, while another holds Charlie by the neck. There are no other creatures left.
Charlie screams in horror and Suzy’s nails dig into my back.
“Master Mind!” Joy says.
“It will not help!” Master Mind says. “The Pirate is in control of his dream.”
“Do it!”
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Charlie’s fleet of 11 condors flies towards the army of what must be a thousand dark demons.
Justin is dangling limply from the talons of one of the demons, but it’s his nightmare that’s bringing about the demons.
Charlie raises his hand and the sky fills with clouds.
“I’ve never seen him like this!” I whisper.
“He wants to be like me,” Joy says matter-of-factly.
I look at her for a second. “How do you know?”
She shrugs. “He tells me all the time.”
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A condor as big as Bonny’s Revenge descends from above to hover outside the ship’s deck, the one farther from us. Suzy, Joy, Master Mind and I watch from the tunnel as Charlie jumps from the railing to the back of the condor with unusual bravery for such a height.
Joy nods to herself. “He used that condor when we met. She’s his friend.”
The dark demons are a kilometer or so ahead of him, throwing Justin from one to the other.
As Charlie flies on the condor towards the demons, more giant condors appear at his side. There are eleven of them now, creating a V formation in the air, with Charlie at the point of the V.
“Oh, my…” Suzy says. “He’s just a little kid. He’s going to have an aerial battle with demons?”
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Justin reappears a few moments later, and with him come the dark demons.
We are all watching from the safety of the tunnel, but I hold my breath as soon as I see them. Suzy, near me, gasps. Joy’s hand goes to the holster of the laser pistol at her side, but she doesn’t draw it.
Justin tries to fight the demon with a sword from the weapons cabinet, but he is suddenly inept with a sword.
“Dad! Into the tunnel!” Joy yells at him.
She stands right on the edge of the tunnel, confident that nothing of the dream can make it across.
Justin sees her, and immediately there is a jetpack on his back. He flies forward, as Joy ducks, but one of the huge demons captures him in its huge talons.
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Once Charlie had taken Justin out of his dream and into the tunnel, there was no longer any danger.
Joy dusted herself off, and went off to helm Bonny’s Revenge up to the sun that Charlie had gone through.
Suzy and I get up slowly from the deck. I can’t help but notice that Joy doesn’t try and help us and doesn’t check up on us. Maybe she assumes we’re okay?
“Suzy?” I ask, looking at her all disheveled and half panicked.
“I’m fine. I’m fine,” she straightens her clothes. “How are you?”
I feel a strange need to touch my chest and actually feel that I wasn’t hurt. “I think I’m okay. That was… That was really scary.”
“Is this how your adventures are?”
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Charlie looks around helplessly as one of the dark creatures attempts to grab Joy.
Joy leaps out of the way, but it was close.
Joy’s weapon needs to recharge. Justin, whose dreams these are, is an obsessed dreamer and can’t snap out of it. And Master Mind’s weapons aren’t working on them.
Charlie raises his hand as if about to conjure something as a dreamer. But he doesn’t. His mind is clearly a blank.
Master Mind leaps at one of the creatures now flying above the ship, who is trying to grab Joy. He grabs the bottom of its taloned leg and is now rising into the air with the creature.
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“My missiles do not wound the monsters,” Master Mind sounds panicky.
“They’ve come for you, Joy!” Justin rolls to the weapons cabinet and goes his body to the fetal position. I have never seen him cower in the Dream.
Joy, on the floor next to the weapons cabinet, launches what looks like a bazooka, but a space bazooka. “Dad! It’s not them!” She aims it at the creatures descending on the ship, and fires at the closest one.
With a zark! sound Joy’s weapon launches a thick, red ray of energy at the closest creature, and it punches a hole in its body. The dark, bat-like creature that’s the size of the ship falls back and into the ocean, dead. “They’re your dream! Make them go away!”
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Master Mind, the killer robot who had been sewn back together, had been standing silently all this time near at the helm of Bonny’s Revenge. He observed silently when Justin appeared, when the kids asked to go on a quest to find Dreamer children, and when Justin had a bad reaction to it.
Now he stands next to Justin, and I hadn’t even noticed that he moved.
“Pirate,” he says. “You have clearly observed a danger in the Dream. I have seen nothing. What stimuli prompted your fear?”
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“Dad, Dad, Dad, the children!” Joy runs up to him.
“The children, the children!” Charlie also runs up to him.
“We have to find the children!”
“We have to find the children!”
Justin looks at the two children jumping up and down and chanting in front of him. He tries to get a word in edgewise, but they keep chanting “We have to find the children! Can we find the children? We have to find the children!”
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